Is coffee good for your heart?

Todos los días me levanto y me preparo una taza de café. Solía beber instantáneo, pasé a las vainas y finalmente me gradué para moler el mío. Bebo alrededor de 2-3 tazas durante el día, a veces más si estuve de guardia la noche anterior.

Como cardiólogo, casi todas las semanas un paciente, amigo o familiar me pregunta si puede tomar café:

“He tenido un ataque al corazón. ¿Podré volver a tomar una taza de café?

“Sé que mi presión arterial ha subido un poco hoy, pero tomé una taza de café esta mañana”.

“He estado teniendo palpitaciones. ¿Debería cambiar a descafeinado?”

The reality is that there’s very little data to suggest that coffee, even in moderate quantities, is bad for us. In fact, multiple recent studies have suggested just the opposite — good news for us daily coffee drinkers. The reason for these beneficial findings is not well established. It’s been speculated that antioxidants in coffee are the cause of this effect, as both caffeinated as well as decaf coffee have been linked to potential health benefits.

Besides cardiac disease, there are studies suggesting that coffee intake is associated with reductions in cancer, stroke, diabetes, and inflammatory disease.

Large studies have suggested that in persons who regularly drink coffee, there’s a reduction in overall rates of mortality. This was borne out in other studies, in multiple different countries, involving many ethnicities. Interestingly, drinking more coffee daily seems associated with increased benefits, and the groups of people who drink more than 5 cups a day did the best. Besides cardiac disease, there are studies suggesting that coffee intake is associated with reductions in cancer, stroke, diabetes, and inflammatory disease.

Pero está aquí porque le preocupa cómo el café podría afectar la salud de su corazón. Vamos a desglosarlo.

Cómo influye el café en el riesgo de infarto

There are not a lot of studies looking at whether drinking coffee after a heart attack is good or bad. In one study, patients who were coffee drinkers at the time of their heart attack fared better than patients who had heart attacks who did not drink coffee. Usually, my patients who have had heart attacks are battling far worse types of behaviors, and coffee drinking is not something that I discourage.

Studies show that coffee may even reduce cardiovascular events in older patients by slowing down valvular disease. Long term, higher consumption of coffee has been associated with fewer cardiac events such as heart attack.

It’s true that studies from many years ago seemed to have implicated coffee drinking with increased heart attacks, but when they looked at those patients who ended up with heart disease, it was associated with tobacco use, not the coffee they were drinking.

Posibles desventajas de tomar café

Some people find that coffee doesn’t agree with them, and there are people who have negative side effects such as headaches, dizziness, GI issues and the inability to sleep. We used to ask persons who had palpitations (extra heart beats) to cut down on coffee, but more recent data suggests that the coffee isn’t causing these problems, and there’s no reason they have to stop drinking it.

It’s notable that these theoretical benefits — or at least non-detriments — are not carried over to caffeine-laden energy drinks. There are many reports of harmful effects when these types of drinks are used or abused, in particular in young or vulnerable populations, i.e. children.

Aquí está mi opinión final sobre el café. Beber café no es un sustituto de tomar medicamentos (cuando están recetados), mantener un peso saludable, abstenerse de fumar o moderar el consumo de alcohol. Las asociaciones entre el café y una mejor salud en estos estudios pueden ser simplemente eso: asociaciones, no causas directas. Como mínimo, se han informado muy pocas consecuencias negativas de beber café.

Entonces, cuando mis pacientes me preguntan si todavía pueden tomar su café (sin un lado de culpa), les digo que disfruten su taza de café.

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